Back to the Future Critique

This project us for my elective term about movies. The purpose of this project was to write a critique about a movie of our choice. I chose Back to the Future because it is one of my favorite movies and I've never really looked at it in depth so I figured id give it a try. I learned a lot about how to write a good movie critique and what components have to go in it for it to be of good quality. I am proud of the critique I wrote because I feel like I did a pretty good job. The reason I say that is because I don't consider myself a good writer but I feel like I did good on this project

"List of Back to the Future Characters." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Nov. 2014. Web. 22 Nov. 2014.

Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future (1985) is the director’s first out of 3 very successful films. The first film was the highest-grossing film of 1985 and became an international phenomenon, leading to the production of the second (1989) and third (1990) films which were actually back to back film productions. Even though that second and third films didn't do as good as the first they were still undoubtedly great films. The first movie starred Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly. The story follows Marty McFly a High school student that travels back in time and has to get back to his own time period by going on a intense and confusing journey. From the time Marty said “I came here in a time machine that you invented, now I need your help to get back to the year 1985” till the end you will be wondering what will happen next.

Now that Marty McFly has went back in time he has to find doc and he has to get his help to get back to the year 1985. The Libyans are the ones that caused all of the mess that you see in the movie because Doc took their plutonium to power the time machine. The Libyans found doc and started shooting, they killed Doc and were now after Marty yelling “get him” which forced Marty to get in the Delorean time machine and drive away. Marty had to do something fast so he accelerated the car to 85 mph and traveled back to the past. When he arrived in the past he instantly tried to travel back but he forgot to grab the plutonium to get back so he was stuck. The Libyans are only in one part of the movie but that one part shaped up everything that happened in the movie.

This movie was created when the co-writer/ producer went through his fathers old yearbook and thought “would we have been friends if we’d been at school together.” He realized that most people have those type of thoughts and what then inspired him more was when he thought about the fact that everyone can shape their future by the paths that they choose and that his parents were young once too and he figured that they could dramatize those two things. The delorean was never originally there, at first it was a time-chamber apparatus. Also the clock tower scene at the end was never there. Instead of the clock tower the time-chamber was powered by radiation from an explosion at a nuclear testing site.

The setting itself in this movie was really good. The set is exactly what I would picture a small town in the past to look like and what was great was that nothing was just thrown on for aesthetics, everything had a purpose. A lot of scenes happened in the café and I feel like that setting is accurate because that would be what i would picture if I think of a hang out spot in the past. As for costumes I feel like they weren't that accurate because I feel like the costumes were almost the same, the only difference was that Marty was wearing a vest. The clock tower felt kind of janky just because of the simple fact that the chance of Doc hooking the wire right when Marty connected the hook seemed a little unrealistic. A lot of the props were pretty cool, like the scooter/skateboard or all of Doc’s inventions. I feel like the part where Doc had on the huge machine that read minds was pretty iconic because still to this day in some tv shows when they build a mind reading machine it sort of resembles the one from the movie.

One of my favorite scenes of this movie was at the end when the lightning struck because I feel like that was the moment where I was stuck thinking “is he gonna make it or will he be stuck” and there was just so much thrill and suspense. One thing that bugs me about that scene is how the wire got disconnected from both sides and the car was going 85 miles per hour and somehow Doc had enough time to reconnect it in the exact same moment the hook attached to the car hit the wire. It was very suspenseful and it was actually really cool but I feel like it was unrealistic. Honestly its no wonder Back to the Future was such a big franchise and when the first movie came out it was a huge hit.